McCain said he was not sure “exactly how” such a proposal would play out in any legislation, “but there is technology now that could give us a Social Security card, people a Social Security card, that is tamper-proof.”

Republicans who promote amnesty are risking a strong backlash from party members who uphold the rule of law, people described by The Washington Post as “supporters of hard-line immigration policies.” As an example, columnist Ann Coulter denounced the proposed immigration legislation of GOP Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) as an amnesty and called it “a wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

Latinos are not going to become instant conservatives [but] . . . without a more generous stance on immigration [i.e. amnesty], Republicans will continue to lose Latino votes. And the fact is Republicans do not need to win 70 percent, or even 51 percent, of Latinos. If they could just get back to Bush’s 44 percent share, it could make a big difference. — David Horsey, Los Angeles Times 2/1/13

Fact Check: The media are still in a virtual feeding frenzy as they keep claiming that Republicans must pass amnesty in order to get “Hispanic votes.” Without these votes, they warn, the GOP will never win national elections again. Interestingly, as many of these commentators are liberal Democrats, their solicitude and concern about Republicans seems strange, to say the least. And frankly it also sounds suspicious, given the obvious political advantage Democrats can gain from amnesty, one explicitly stated by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer in his book How Progressives Can Win.

Harry Enten, who publishes in guardian.co.uk, recently wrote an article explaining why promoting amnesty will not win Republicans enough Hispanic votes to give their party any significant electoral advantage. His main points are summarized below:

A Latino Decisions (LD) poll right before the election found that only six percent of Hispanics said that immigration was the most important issue to them. Sixty-five percent cited other issues. When asked if a more liberal Republican position on immigration would make them more inclined to vote for the GOP, 31 percent said yes, but 58 percent say they weren’t sure or that it have no effect, and 11 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for the party.

The main reason for the reluctance of many Hispanics to support the GOP is their opposition to its central message of less government. Seventy-five percent of Hispanics, according to research by the Pew Hispanic Center, favor larger government and more social programs, compared with only 19 percent who want smaller government. On social issues, stressed by Republicans, second and third generations Hispanics are no more conservative than the general population, and on two, abortion and homosexuality, they are more liberal.

Contrary to the media narratives, pro-amnesty Republican presidential candidates do not do significantly better than those who oppose it. The claim that George W. Bush got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote is unsubstantiated. According to polling by the William C. Velasques Institute, his total was only 35 percent. Pro-amnesty John McCain got only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, not a significantly greater margin than Mitt Romney’s 27 percent.

The Hispanic percentage of the voting population is growing, but not rapidly. It projected to rise only 0.6 percent, each election year, through 2024. Also some of the key swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have small Hispanic populations, which will have little impact on elections.

The best strategy for Republicans, Enten suggests, is to wait for more Hispanics to move up the economic ladder and assimilate. Then Republican principles may become more appealing to them. Although he didn’t say so, he might have added that continued mass immigration, and particularly amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens, will certainly delay assimilation. Also, he might have noted that GOP support for amnesty will alienate many grassroots Republicans and discourage them from voting.

The welcome materials the federal government directs new immigrants to read — which detail, among other facets of American life, how and where to get government benefits — are in the process of getting a bit of a makeover to increase accessibility for newcomers.

The WelcometoUSA.gov website, which bills itself as “the U.S. Government’s official web portal for new immigrants,” maintained by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), will soon feature information about President Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation, USCIS spokesman Chris Bentley told The Daily Caller.

USCIS has already added new promotional banners to the site that make it easier for users to find information about personal finance, child care and emergency information. The agency is working to make the language even more accessible to its target immigrant audience.

Pressing to move quickly to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws, Democratic leaders began setting a strategy to advance legislation as the White House worked to rally business support.

Returning to a tactic used in last year’s fiscal fight, administration officials held a conference call with executives of some of the nation’s largest companies to lay out President Barack Obama’s proposals and to enlist corporate backing.

President Obama said Wednesday that he wants Congress to pass an overhaul of immigration law in the first half of the year, suggesting that if lawmakers cannot produce a detailed plan within a few months, he would probably intervene with his own legislation.

In interviews with Hispanic television networks, Obama, for the first time, gave a rough timetable for an overhaul of immigration policy. He told interviewers at Telemundo and Univision that he thought a March deadline for a plan was sensible.

At the state and local level, the average low skill immigrant household received $14,145 in benefits and services and paid only $5,309 in taxes. The average low skill immigrant households imposed a net fiscal burden on state and local government of $8,836 per year.

The fiscal burden imposed by low skill immigrant households is slightly greater at the state and local level than at the federal level. The annual fiscal deficit for all 4.54 million low skill immigrant households at the state and local level in 2004 was $49.1 billion. Over the next ten years the state and local fiscal deficit caused by low skill immigrants on state and local governments will approach a half trillion dollars.

President Obama promoted amnesty for illegal aliens on two Spanish language television networks. To put forward his message, he did interviews with Jose Diaz Balart of Telemundo and Maria Elena Salinas of Univision.

Illegal alien advocates are telling Republicans that they must not use language that offends illegal aliens. Specifically, they say that Republicans should use the word “undocumented immigrant” instead of “illegal” or “alien.” Also they should refer to amnesty as “immigration reform.” A leader of this effort is Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who once stated that “I have only one loyalty, and that’s to the immigrant community.”

For decades, Democrats have been working feverishly to create more Democrats by encouraging divorce (another Democratic voter!), illegitimacy (another Democratic voter!) and Third World immigration (another Democratic voter!).

Strangely, some Republicans seem determined to create more Democratic voters, too. That will be the primary result of Sen. Marco Rubio’s amnesty plan.

Fact Checker

"During
my years in Congress I was well acquainted with the good work that AIC
Foundation was doing to raise public awareness of America's immigration crisis.
It proposes the sensible solutions of enforcing our immigration laws and
limiting legal immigration to a level more conducive to assimilation
and the protection of American workers." -- Former Congressman Paul Broun
(R-GA)

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